You Can’t Negotiate with Terrorists. Or Republicans.

Gov. Jay Inslee needs a win. After two years in Olympia, legislative victories on his proposals are sparse, and it’s not looking good this year either.

Instead, Inslee has been primarily a speechmaker-in-chief, and mostly about carbon reduction. In Associated Press style, he’d be Gov. Inslee, D-Climate Change, not D-Wash.

… Heading into his third year in office, Inslee needs a win. Voters in 2016 will want to know: Is Inslee an ideologue or a pragmatic executive?

Really? Jay Inslee is the ideologue here? Why? Because he accepts the overwhelming science of climate change? Because he believes it’s the responsibility of government to try to, you know, not destroy the fucking planet?

The problem with the sort of pragmatic, bipartisan, false-equivalentarianism the Seattle Times espouses is that in the current political environment, there is nothing pragmatic about it. True bipartisanship is only possible either when both sides are already in basic agreement (like when the allegedly “ideological” Inslee called a special session to ram the Boeing tax-break package down our throats), or when both sides are willing to compromise. But in the current political environment, the state senate Republican majority has absolutely zero will or incentive to give a nanometer.

First of all—and let’s be completely frank about this—a goodly chunk of the Republican caucus is filled with science-denying Christianist/Teahadist whack-jobs. Seriously. These people are fucking crazy. Do you really believe that the high-school-student-marrying minimum-wage-worker-hating Rep. Matt Manweller (R-Ellensburg) is even remotely capable of compromise? Do we really want that to be the measure of a “pragmatic executive”: the ability to find common ground with a vile, anti-labor, sexual predator?

Second, the whole notion that Inslee’s performance in office should be judged by his ability to push his agenda through the Republican senate is nothing less than a setup for failure. The Republicans want Inslee to fail! That is the whole of their agenda! Legislative gridlock is a win-win for them because A) preventing the government from doing stuff is exactly what their constituents sent them to Olympia to do, and B) Senate Ways & Means Committee chair Andy Hill is running for governor against Inslee in 2016! So even if this iteration of the Republican Party was capable of compromise (and it’s not), why on earth would it want to hand Inslee a legislative victory?

Sound familiar? It took six long years for President Obama to accept the fact that the entire congressional Republican agenda was: make President Obama fail. What did compromise get Obama in the meanwhile? A half-measure of a health care reform package whose repeal has become the rallying cry of the Republican Party.

“Team of rivals,” my ass.

Inslee at least has been a quicker study. He knew he didn’t have a snowball’s chance of getting either a carbon tax or a capital gains tax past the Republicans this session. He’s not stupid. So he’s using the power he has—the power of the bully pulpit—to help move the political conversation from where it is to where he thinks it needs to be. That doesn’t make him an ideologue. It makes him a leader.

Sure, compromise is great if both sides are willing to do it. And true bipartisanship is a lofty goal. But to score Inslee “an ideologue” for failing to push his proposals through this senate is to place the scorecard squarely in the hands of Republicans. It is a bullshit meme I hope nobody takes seriously, especially not Inslee.

While we’re on this subject, I’d like to remind everyone that the U.S. Senate’s 46 Democrats and independents were elected by 60 million votes, while the 54 Republicans constituting the Senate “majority” were elected by 40 million votes. It’s not as if that government was chosen by the voters.

all good comments by goldy and the rabbit. but please, we do not advance anwhere pointing out the gop is a scorpion, or that our system is undemocratic.

inslee’s job is to win ANYWAY. so how’s he doing? 1. failure to pass min wage initiative. polls showed it would pass, didn’t bother to put it on ballot, 2. would have helped dems in leg. who knows how much? maybe roach out, or shelton OUT. 3. would help Dem Party brand. (Much more than the constant hand wringing about the grammar sins ofthe gop and subliminal blah blah blah about “Democrat Party” bullshit.) 4. carbon tax — just fucking tax it all and hand out the money in rebates to every adult resident, or better yet, to families based on family size. give people a damn incentive to be for carbon tax. equal rebates. what’s he waiting for? start talking about the annual check you’ll get from the Washington Make Polluters Pay Us Trust Fund.

5. stop bertha, build the plan for a roadway on surface with awesome lid above connecting flatly to street grid of downtown and offering actual views, not the phoney views from ground level that would be blocked by you know, the buildings over the water? provide park AND connection AND road/bus/freight capacity. I mean good god we have examples staring us in the face like highline in nyc, what’s wrong with the state and WSDOT and all fucking transportation planning? Why would people trust a governor on anything when he says about Bertha “oh well, I didn’t really vote for that so you know, um, er, let’s keep going I guess, until we REALLY know it’s a total failure…..” in fact the whole idea of being for the environment with a carbon plan while building bertha is so crazy, you have to wonder if the problem is bipolarism. or being schizo. are we in climate crisis or not? if yes, why on earth a slowly warming earth are we building the huge bertha tunnel thatis going to fail and just emit construction carbon up the wazzoo for no purpose at all?

one party is a scorpion. the other is s little shrinkworm afraid to stand up and do battle. because before you compromise you need a position of strength, and the dems seem incapable of figuring out how to get that. mentally, they are afraid of legitimate power, and real leadership. whining and complaining about the gop, or the times, or this or that, well then, they’re GREAT at that.

@7awesome comment, but you won’t hear a single democratic senator say it.

they ought to be tracking the population-represented numbers on every key vote and just be blasting the gop everyday for not being democratic. they should do away with filibuster for same reason. they should get all riled about puerto rico and dc and accuse the gop of racist colonialism right here in US lands and denying 6 million people the vote entirely (for reps and sens making us laws). all this stuff would work as people would get it if only they would have a voice. maybe we need to send the democratic party to Dr. Phil. Or the coach in friday night lights. or show them john wayne movies or something. sawantshowed the path to getting $15 an hour and they couldn’t take that statewide?

60 million voters from predominantly blue states elected 46 Senators, and 40 million voters from predominantly red states elected 54 Senators: sound exaclty like what the Founding Fathers had in mind – the Senate represents the states and the House represents the districts within the several states.

@8, 9 — Got any suggestions? Know where we can find some Democratic electeds with a spine? Elizabeth Warren is one, but I can’t think of any others. I busted my balls to help Gregoire win, and all she did was keep a chair warm for 8 years while our state budget imploded. Obama promised change, but went pffft on issues like closing Gitmo and prosecuting crooked bankers, although he’s still somewhat better than useless. After Murray was elected mayor, he appointed a cop union official as interim police chief whose first act was to reverse all the outstanding disciplinary actions against badly behaving cops. Being disappointed over and over by our electeds is a longrunning problem for the Democratic rank-and-file. I don’t know the solution. Do you?

Washington’s Democratic Party isn’t liberal, or even centrist, it’s run by people who used to be moderate Republicans until they got run out of the GOP by the crazies. We still have two political parties in this state, but both of them are called “Democrats” now, plus we have a motley rabble on the far right calling themselves “Republicans” although this state doesn’t really have a traditional Republican Party anymore. It’s important to understand the Democratic Party is really two parties, and moderate Republicans run it while liberals can only sit and watch.

@12 Sawant. Yes, I know the whole nationalize MS and that trotskyite thing, but damn it, SHE got the min wage hiked in the city.

@11:

th founding fathers were not for democracy, why should I revere them in their ….respect….for something called a state? it’s perfectly ridiculous to think of montana as some kind of different thing than idaho in the way that say, france is from germany. it’s undemocratic. it’s a tyrrany of a minority, which is a bit wors than the tyrranny of the majority, see: fight against monarcy, for democracy.

if you believe in states, you don’t believe in democracy.

and then there’s DC and puerto rico which don’t get to be states, folks there get to be owned by us, with laws made by us, and they have no vote for congress re making national laws over them. try to be a resident there and exercise the right to vote — you can’t. just like AAs in mississippi from what 1810 to what, 1965.

this is what you defend, denial of voting rights, and unequal voting rights via the “state” being represented? it’s the same fucking lack of democracy as the old rotten boroughs in england and other corruption of parliament. the founding fathers got lots of shit wrong and had we obeyed their design we would not even HAVE half the country (LA purchase abuse of exec power, etc.). the little built in acceptance of enslavement caused a big war, I recall. Statism, i.e., making a wyoming jerkhole worth about 3.5 times more than a washingtonian jerkhole in voting power, and 45 times more than a californianherkhole, is no more democracy than if we simply said “okay, all the voters in the red states get 1.35 votes each, the rest get 1.0 votes each, and oh, DC and puerto rico, you six million, you’re not even 3/5 of a man, you get 0.0 votes each.”

start by talking. support the ones with balls in city district elections. example: fucking bertha. they SAY we want transit, we are for social justice but go along with this phoney bauble for the land owners downtown. support campaign finance reform.

that’s starters.

oh and this: STOP the incessant whiney whining about the seattle times, it sure is dumb! (we know.) stop the bemoaning that the gop didn’t play fair and eyman is making a living off blah blah blah. we can start by just telling 2/3 the folks on our side to put a cork in it, they’re fostering a sense of defeatism by not being positive, proactive and self empowered. it’s like a teenager in high school whining that billy, the football star (analogue to gop) didn’t play fair when he blah blah blah and got the girl. just can it, look inward, be honest and go forth, and oh, stop with the freaking regressive taxes, that’s just insane. unless you WANT working class people to have zero faith and trust in democrats and government. “hey let’s teach the people to just hate government, by imposing more regressive taxes!” seems to be the plan.

Let’s remind everyone that Obummer’s policies were on the ballot in 2014 and Obummer’s peeps stayed home. When you don’t vote you can’t cry about the results senile schismatic IDIOT Wabbit @7! It similar to all those millions of conservatives who chose to stay home in 2012!

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